


Judge and Jury

by Tokyo_the_Glaive



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Confessions, Dreams, F/M, Karen-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 15:11:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6571048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tokyo_the_Glaive/pseuds/Tokyo_the_Glaive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her dreams, she tells him.</p><p>(Or, the one where Karen dreams of Frank Castle and reflects on what they've done as the world falls apart.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Judge and Jury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amidtheflowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amidtheflowers/gifts).



In her dreams, she tells him.

They’re sitting in that diner.Frank has a cup of coffee— _fresh pot_ , the woman behind the counter had said as she poured him a refill.He doesn’t hold it by the handle but rather wraps his entire hand around the mug.Karen thinks he could crush it, if he wanted to.He could crush _her_ , right here, right now.Maybe he will.

The woman behind the counter is nowhere to be seen.Neither is the rest of the staff.There are two bodies, warm but unmoving, hacked and punched and shot to bits on the floor.The wet blood refuses to dry.Frank refuses to look anywhere but at Karen.

“His name was James Wesley,” Karen says.By some miracle, her voice doesn’t shake.Even so, she’s terrified.Outside, she sees flashing lights, hears the roar of cars going by.Everything is fast and slow and she wants to be sick because she can’t even _see_ the two dead men but she can feel them, the slick of the still warm blood and the smooth texture of exposed organs.

“He was a bad person,” Karen continues.Frank won’t look away.He’s got a cut at his hairline, and a drop of blood has been trying to fall for as long as she remembers sitting in that booth.Karen doesn’t bother considering explaining the circumstances as she says, “I killed him.”

“Did you have to?” Frank asks.It’s the first he’s spoken, and his voice is gravel under tires and dust in dry air.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Karen says, a little too quickly.

* * *

In her dreams, she tells him, but in reality, her lips are sealed hermetically.  Even before the dreams begin, she confesses to no one.  She hears about Frank on the news, sees him in the hospital, in court—and she says nothing.  Later, she sees him at the diner, at the docks, in the woods—and still, she says nothing.

It hurts her to remain silent.There’s the guilt of the act, of course, the weight of what she’s done, but there’s something else—her silence is a lie of sorts, a lie of omission.She wants forgiveness for her silence, for the lie, but she can’t clear her mind.Guilt follows her about like a shadow.

“ _The air that seems to adhere to your skin, the layer of filth you can never completely wash away.”_ Karen wishes she could forget the words, forget the feeling of a gun in her hand and the tightness in her fingers as she squeezes.There’s been an itch in her ever since, the tense thrum of constant fear beating with a frequency that leaves her short of breath and sweating.

 _You’re a killer_ , the shadows and the air and the filth of her guilt tell her. _You can’t judge him because you_ are _him_.

Except.

Except, Karen tells herself, she killed to protect herself.Frank kills to avenge his family.It’s different.

_Does that make it any better?_

Karen refuses to answer, even within the privacy of her own mind.

* * *

They’re in the diner again.  That cut on his forehead is bleeding but not dripping.  The blood on the floor refuses to dry.  Karen’s hands are slippery.  A gun sits in the middle of the table.

Karen lunges for it.The only reason she gets ahold of it is because he makes no move to stop her.He could snap her in two—judging from the look in his eye, he’s considering it—and his reflexes are substantially better than hers.He’s letting her win, and she hates it.

“I had to kill him,” Karen says.Her hands aren’t shaking, even as she pulls the trigger.

The recoil is weak, and she can’t feel her index finger.Six holes appear in Frank’s chest, red spreading outward in blotchy, irregular patches.

“Did you have to kill me?” Frank asks, and Karen drops the gun, horrified.Frank gingerly picks it up from where he sits across the booth and smiles with half of his face.“Did you?”

* * *

It’s Christmas Eve, and Karen has hardly spent a night at home, between the chaos that is Hell’s Kitchen and her new position at the Bulletin.  She’s been chasing leads on her own for so long, working around Foggy and Matt and the law, that she hardly knows what to do when it’s the _only_ thing she has to do.

The headline of _The New York Times_ glares at her from the corner of her desk.

 _Lies_ , Karen thinks, viciously. _Frank isn’t dead_.

But there’s no way to tell that truth, is there?As far as she can tell, she’s the only one who saw him, shooting from an adjacent rooftop.Daredevil had been on the other, and, if the rest of the reporting community could be believed, so was a rich socialite and a bunch of illegal Asian men and women dressed like characters from a bad kung fu film.

All dead, of course.(Well, not Daredevil.Karen almost believes he can’t die.She certainly hopes he can’t.)

(She has decided not to think about the hand on her cheek, about what it reminds her of.)

Frank is still out there, alive and as well as he could be, but who would believe her if she came out with so much?She’s the only source, and she’s the _reporter_.She can’t come out with it because there’s no one to back her up.

Even if she tries to publish it, it’s unlikely that Frank would thank her for it.

 _Screw him_ , Karen thinks. _He killed…_

Who all has Frank killed?Karen knows all of their names, has seen all of their bodies at some point or another.There are so many, so many, but when Karen tries to summon the pictures in her head, tries to speak the names, all she can see is a well-dressed man in glasses slumped over in a chair in an empty warehouse by the water, phone ringing endlessly.

Frank’s victims had families when they were alive.Karen remembers the trial, right before it had all gone to hell.Had _he_ had someone to care about him?Had his _employer—_ had _Wilson Fisk_ —cared?Karen wasn’t even rightly sure who she had stolen from the world—and she’d tried to find information, she had.In that first week, after drinking herself into oblivion and refusing to sleep for fear of the nightmares, she had combed the internet.It was masochistic and self-indulgent, but she’d done it anyway…

…and found nothing.He was a ghost, a phantom.He appeared with Fisk in several of the photos of his speeches, there with his name— _James Wesley_ —but there was nothing else.No backstory, no family, no information.

Karen couldn’t tell if that made it easier or harder.

* * *

They’re in that empty warehouse.  Karen can smell the water, polluted and infected and churning outside.  She can hardly move, and the chair digs into her thighs.  Her stockings are torn at one knee.

Frank sits across the table.His eyes are darkened with bruises and his face is a mass of cuts.He wears a hospital gown with polka dots, and his hands are restrained at his sides.

“The point is,” Frank says, “you were safe, okay? I just…wanted you to know that.”

“I don’t feel safe,” Karen says, or tries to say.Her lips move but she can only making a low, whining noise that she knows he can’t hear.There isn’t a gun on the table, but there will be.

Outside, Karen hears a series of metallic _thuds_.She doesn’t know who’s coming, but she’s afraid, so very afraid.

“You were safe,” Frank repeats.He gives one of those half-smiles, and his teeth are bloody.

* * *

Matt doesn’t even bother to call, just sends a text.

Karen considers ignoring it, like he’s ignored her for so long now, but then he sends another:

 _Please_.

Karen’s never been able to walk away from someone desperate, and Matt certainly fits the bill now.She collects her purse, snapping her laptop shut with a little more force than absolutely necessary.She’s written something for Ellison, so he’ll be happy—at least someone will be happy.

The cab ride to the old offices of Nelson and Murdock is short.The television screen mounted into the rear plays commercials and comedy segments that set Karen’s teeth on edge. _Doesn’t anyone know?_ she screams, wordless and furious. _Doesn’t anyone care?_

Karen pays with what little money she has in her wallet—barely enough to cover the ride, but hopefully the Bulletin will prove a better opportunity, both for herself and her bank account—and steps out onto the curb.

The sign’s still there, absurdly.She runs her fingers over the lettering.

 _Nelson, Murdock, and Page_.She finds herself feeling for the _Page_ even though she knows it isn’t going to be there, could never be there, _will_ never be there.It feels like more than the disintegration of a law firm.

Karen climbs the stairs and stands in the dark of the office, and when Matt comes through the door—late, to his own rendezvous? why is Karen surprised?—she doesn’t say a word.

He knows she’s there, though, and thanks her for coming.

When he takes out the mask—“I’m Daredevil”—Karen feels her world tilting, skewing violently to one side.

* * *

They’re in the diner, except the diner and the warehouse have merged.  Karen sits across from Frank in the booth, and to her right, where there should have been empty space, sits the table and the body, a man with glasses and six gunshot wounds.  His cellphone rings and rings and rings and rings.

* * *

Karen doesn’t go back home, though Matt— _the Devil_ —offers to escort her.  (Her cheek burns.)  She goes back to the office to see the clock hit midnight.  It’s Christmas.

Karen opens her laptop and begins typing almost before the screen lights up.

 _I killed James Wesley_ , she writes. _I shot him six times.I told no one.I watched him die.I killed him._

When she’s finished, she prints a copy of her confession.She erases all of the text in the document without having saved the file.Ben kept matches in the drawer of the desk that no one bothered to throw away, and Karen watches her words go up in flames.

* * *

“Did you have to?” Frank asks.  He’s looking at the body in the seat just by the booth.

“I wanted to,” Karen says.“I could have gotten out, but I panicked.He had tried to kill me before, and he wanted me to betray my friends.He wanted me to lie, to hide the truth.I couldn’t do that.”

There’s a gun on the table.Frank picks it up.

“But you did,” he says.“You didn’t tell anyone.”

“Yes,” Karen says.There’s a long moment where Karen swears she can hear Wesley breathing.

Very slowly, Frank sets the gun on the table, right in the middle.She could reach it, if she wanted to.

“You’re safe,” he says.To her right, the corpse of James Wesley has vanished.The floors are clean.

Karen reaches across the table to steal Frank’s coffee.He lets her ease the mug out of his hands and watches as she takes a long drink. 

 _Fresh pot_ , the waitress had said.

Frank doesn’t laugh—Karen doesn’t know what that sounds like—but it’s a near thing.He steals back the mug and drinks the dregs.Outside, the city is quiet.For the first time in months, the itch that’s been just under Karen’s skin disappears.


End file.
